The release follows a recent string of disclosures from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who earlier this month declassified dozens of pages of Trump-Russia documents. These include intelligence showing that by the spring and summer of 2016, the FBI had acted as “an accelerant” to Clinton-backed opposition research, chiefly the Steele dossier, that falsely portrayed Trump as a Russian asset.

“This was a Hillary Clinton plan,” Ratcliffe told Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures this week, “but part of it was an FBI plan to be an accelerant to that fake Steele dossier … pouring oil on the fire, amplifying the lie, and burying the truth.”

The newly released annex contains memos detailing “confidential conversations” between then–Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and senior officials at George Soros‘s Open Society Foundations, collected in early 2016. According to the annex, a March 2016 memo referenced a Clinton campaign plan to link Trump to Russian organized crime to distract from her own email scandal.

That same memo said that “[the Democratic Party’s] opposition is focused on discrediting Trump,” and Clinton campaign staff, “with support from special services,” were preparing “scandalous revelations” about Trump’s alleged ties to the “Russian Mafia.”

According to the annex, FBI analysts reviewing the memo in 2016 interpreted “special services” as a possible reference to U.S. intelligence or law enforcement, including the FBI, or to dossier author Christopher Steele, a former member of British intelligence.

By July 2016, the FBI had received additional intelligence indicating that Clinton operatives expected media and FBI-linked cybersecurity firms to plant and amplify the false narrative. “Later,” one email from a Clinton ally said, “the FBI will put more oil into the fire.” Another said that “[Hillary Clinton] approved the idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections” to shift public attention from her own missing emails.

Durham said, “The FBI was fully alerted to the possibility that at least some of the information it was receiving about the Trump campaign might have its origin either with the Clinton campaign or its supporters, or alternatively, was the product of Russian disinformation.”

Yet, according to Durham, the FBI “appears to have dismissed the intelligence information as not credible without any investigative steps actually having been taken to either corroborate or disprove the allegations.”

On Aug. 3, 2016, then–CIA Director John Brennan briefed top officials, including then-President Barack Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper, and then-FBI Director James Comey, about the Clinton plan. That briefing was followed by a CIA referral to the FBI, which the bureau never acted on.

At the same time, the FBI was ramping up its counterintelligence investigation into Trump, which opened on July 31, 2016, under the code name Crossfire Hurricane. The investigation was based largely on a single conversation that George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign volunteer, had in a bar with Australian diplomats, in which Papadopoulos relayed secondhand information he had heard about Russia.

Grassley said the annex “exposes how the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump,” calling it “one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history.”

The annex also revisits prior findings that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was misled during 2016 and 2017 by FBI officials seeking to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. In one instance, an FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to a criminal charge related to his alteration of a document used to support a FISA warrant renewal.

The annex further says the best assessment of U.S. intelligence officials is that the emails and memos reviewed were likely authentic and were sourced in part from Russian hacking of U.S. think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations and Carnegie Endowment.

Durham’s original unclassified report, released in May 2023, concludes that the FBI rushed into the Trump-Russia investigation “without any solid evidence of collusion” and failed to properly vet the partisan origins of the Steele dossier.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Gabbard worked with the CIA and NSA to complete the declassification process, which began earlier this year. They have signaled that further intelligence community materials are forthcoming.

The newly declassified annex concludes by reaffirming that the FBI ignored multiple red flags in 2016 that alerted them to the possibility that at least some information it was receiving about the Trump campaign might have its origins with the Clinton campaign or its supporters, or was the product of Russian disinformation.

DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS APPEAR TO CONTRADICT SEVERAL STATEMENTS FORMER CIA DIRECTOR JOHN BRENNAN MADE TO CONGRESS

Despite “this awareness, the FBI appears to have dismissed the [intelligence information] as not credible without any investigative steps actually having been taken to either corroborate or disprove the allegations.”

Read the full declassified Durham annex here:

Declassified Durham Annex Released by Chairman Grassley by reportoftheday on Scribd